Wizzard Software announced today that AT&T Natural Voices will soon be available for Apple Mac OS 10.3 in English, French, German and Spanish. Wizzard will be making this exceptional technology available to Apple application developers.
Named “Technology of the Year” by Frost & Sullivan, a global leader in international consulting and training on emerging high technology and industrial markets, AT&T’s Natural Voices product line is widely considered to be one of the most human-sounding speech synthesis systems in the world. AT&T Natural Voices offers “plug-and-play” language support instead of requiring different engines for each language, and the AT&T technology provides exceptionally high channel density.
“AT&T Natural Voices is currently enjoying incredible popularity in the Windows and Linux environments,” stated Bruce Phifer, Wizzard General Manager of Technology and Services in the press release. “When you consider the dynamic growth of Apple products and the high quality of user interface that Apple users expect, it seemed very compelling to make this great technology available to the Apple development community as well.”
Mac OS X allows application developers to seamlessly incorporate Text-To-Speech into a variety of Mac applications and is beneficial in a number of vertical markets, including accessibility, business automation, security systems, and education. AT&T’s Natural Voices has been licensed by Wizzard to a growing number of developers to be used in a variety of environments, including personal productivity, Homeland security, alert systems, and simulators for training in the US Military & NASA astronauts. Application developers wishing to learn more about Wizzard’s offering of AT&T Natural Voices for Mac OS 10.3 can send an email inquiry to sales@wizzardsoftware.com
According to a statement released earlier this year, Apple Computer reported their 2005 first quarterly revenue and net income as the highest in the history of their company, with 74% revenue growth. Apple shipped 1,046,000 Macintosh units during this quarter, representing a 26% increase in CPU units over the year-ago quarter. According to US News and World Report, Macintosh owners buy 30% more software than their Windows counterparts. Further, Macintosh software comprises over 18% of all software sold, according to the Software and Information Industry Association. In addition, the Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs.
More info here.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Survey shows Apple Macs owned by nearly 10 percent of US small and medium-sized businesses – February 17, 2005
More people use Apple Macs than you think; 8-12 percent of homes use Macs – March 31, 2004
10 percent of computer users use a Mac; 3 percent is Mac’s approximate quarterly market share – February 10, 2004
Syracuse Post-Standard: 3 percent is a false stat; Mac holds ’10 to 12 percent of the market for PCs – August 27, 2003
The Software Publishers Association estimates that 16% of computer users are on Macs?? I thought it was 2%?
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“…the Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs.”
Thank you. Now can we put the tired old “single digit marketshare” argument to bed? It never meant anything in the first place.
>The Software Publishers Association estimates that 16% of computer users are on Macs?? I thought it was 2%?>
The majority of windows machines are cash registers and the like.
I’d say that 16% is stretching it quite a bit..
However, the 2%-3% marketshare is in terms of CPU sales per year, not users. Considering that Macs last a lot longer than WinTel boxes, I’ve read that the estimate of actual Mac users is somewhere between 5% – 10%.
That’s why the report referred to computer users (aka: user base). The report actually knows what it’s talking about – unlike some self-proclaimed tech analysts/gurus.
Nonetheless, I’d still like to know what Apple’s marketshare is in the markets that actually matter – Education, Home consumer, Businesses (used in productivity – not POS machines, of course), etc.
>Considering that Macs last a lot longer than WinTel boxes, I’ve read that the estimate of actual Mac users is somewhere between 5% – 10%.>
You may be correct if you discount all the machines that are cash registers etc. Real users are about 15%. But like you, who am I to know?
Now if we break that down even further. The number of people that actually “use” their systems. Instead of just playing games etc.
I wouldn’t doubt that close to 16% of computers actually in consumer’s homes are Macs. You’ve gotta take into account the millions upon millions of Windows boxes that end up in office cubicles and at point-of-sale locations, etc. Just because John Doe works in an office that has 500 PCs scattered about doesn’t mean he doesn’t own one Mac back at home. That’s how the market share numbers get skewed disproportionately in Windows favor.
Actually the important number is “Macintosh software comprises over 18% of all software sold, according to the Software and Information Industry Association”
That’s the number that matters to the software industry, they do not care how many users are out there, they want buyers not users.
For X sake, screw the market share numbers for a second, since no one’s going to even take note aside from us.
I read the headline and got excited. Then I found out what it was really all about, and came back to bitter disappointment.
I’ve been wishing AT&T’s Text-to-Speech tech would come to OSX for years. I only wish Apple would’ve licensed it and integrated it into the OS itself, instead of having a third-party provide it (and then only to certain applications apparently).
The default TTS voices are pathetic imitations of speech, barely better than what we had when PowerMacs were introduced in 1994!! There’s no way I’ll have my computer read a long page of text with the crappy default voices.
The sample voice “mike” sounds like Tom Chiusano from the Howard Stern Show, hmmmm. Interesting that the samples are played using Quicktime.
No offense to the Germans, but the German ones are really damn good. Better than the English. This will, I hope, bring Dr. Sbaitso to the Mac. Then I can have a friend.
I have been happy with voices from Cepstral –
http://www.cepstral.com/
They may not be quite at the level of those from AT&T, but to my ears they are very good, and they can be used instead of the old voices with no problem.
Back to the user base figures.. what we now need are headlines -or advertising- along the lines of:
“ONE IN TEN COMPUTER USERS ARE FREE OF VIRUS AND SPYWARE PROBLEMS – WHY? THEY CHOSE APPLE MAC”